The present invention relates generally to toll road revenue collection systems, and more particularly, to an open toll road cashless revenue collection system employing transponders and cameras to track vehicles.
Typically, conventional toll roads use manned or unmanned toll booths to collect tolls for using the roads. The toll booths typically use human operators, which introduces the possibility of human errors. Toll booths are lane and speed restrictive. A toll booth requires a vehicle to stay in one lane, and the vehicle operator must stop and endure the inconvenience of a cash transaction, whether by paying a human toll collector or by depositing cash in a toll collection machine.
Other conventional toll roads use lane restricted electronic toll collection systems. This type of restriction does not require vehicles to completely stop although the vehicle must usually slow down. This type of system requires the construction of barrier lanes and toll booths. The barrier lanes and toll booths add to the cost of the infrastructure of a toll road. The barriers and lane restrictions force commuters to slow down, leading to traffic congestion.
Thus, conventional system either have transponders and cash, which requires toll booths and cash handling, or they use transponders only, which reduces patronage.
Accordingly, it is an objective of the present invention to provide for an open road toll cashless collection system employing transponder and camera tracking of vehicles that eliminates the restrictions placed upon drivers by conventional systems. It is a further objective of the present invention to provide for an open road toll collection system that tracks vehicles in multiple lanes using transponders and cameras and eliminates the need for vehicles to stop or reduce speed for fee collection while allowing both transponder equipped and vehicles without transponders to use the toll road.